Mt. Vernon Breaks Ground On Female Veterans Memorial

MOUNT VERNON, Ill. (AP) – A southern Illinois city plans to honor female U.S. military veterans with a monument.

Dignitaries broke ground Friday in Mount Vernon on the monument representing women’s service from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Luanne Bruckner with the Daughters of the American Revolution tells the Mount Vernon Register-News that the centerpiece of the $125,000 memorial outside the C.E. Brehm Memorial Library will be bronze statues of Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher and of Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth.

Duckworth, the Hoffman Estates veteran, was a helicopter pilot in Iraq when she lost both her legs and partial use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in 2004. Bruckner says the memorial is being paid from by her organization’s fundraising.